44 pages • 1 hour read

Small as an Elephant

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Elephants

The most important symbol in the novel, elephants are a symbol for Jack’s position in the world, as the novel’s title signals, and each chapter begins with a assertion about elephants, such as their powerful memories of one another or the notion that they’re “like people, only more so” (1). Jack is an expert when it comes to elephants. Elephants are his favorite thing in the world. He knows all about what they like, how they live, and their amazing characteristics that indicate they have deeper thoughts and more complex personalities than most people realize. Jack is constantly connected to the idea of elephants. He imagines himself as one, dreams of being one, and sees elephants in the clouds and rocks around him. He takes a plastic toy elephant from a store, and it becomes like a friend and a reminder of something positive in his life: “His left hand folded around the little elephant in his pocket. It gave him comfort. It gave him courage” (135). Jack and his mother used to bond over elephants, but in recent years it has been more of a source of conflict. Their most recent argument was over Jack’s desire to meet Lydia the elephant and his mother’s refusal to support captivity. Jack goes to see Lydia anyway, because he hopes that in doing so he can remember a time when he and his mother connected. Meeting Lydia is a surreal experience for Jack, and he bonds with her as he blows into her trunk and stares into her eyes. He also remembers that it was his grandmother, not his mother, who first took him to see an elephant. All of the suffering and tragedy that Jack endured became worth it for that moment.

Maine

Both the setting for the story and a prominent motif, Maine illustrates mood and provides a backdrop for Jack’s experiences of abandonment, survival, and reunion. Jack is left alone at Acadia National Park, which is located on Mount Desert Island in Maine. The island is a popular tourist destination filled with quaint and beautiful places to visit. Jack planned to visit all of these places with his mother but ends up visiting them on his own. While he doesn’t get to enjoy them the same way he would have if the vacation had gone as planned, Jack gets a firsthand, more direct, and more personal experience of seaside life in Maine. He eats the famous red snapper hot dogs, climbs rocks and dips his feet in the ocean, and warms himself on a large rock that reminds him of an elephant. The salty sea air is almost palpable in these moments: “They dipped their feet into the freezing-cold sea until Aiden’s parents called them away from the dangerous surf, and then they whipped seaweed and each other’s legs instead” (15). Passages like this one evoke a carefree, whimsical mood, but Jack also experiences plenty of moments in which being alone in a strange place puts his safety at risk. He sleeps alone in the woods and wanders through and between several towns he has never been to before. His only indication that he’s going in the direction of home is that the ocean is on his left. Even when Jack leaves Mount Desert Island and ventures to places like Fort Knox Park and York, he remains mentally on an island because a wall exists that doesn’t allow him to trust others. Not until he’s with Lydia and his grandmother does this wall finally start to break down.

Survival

A key motif in Small as an Elephant is survival. The novel uses this motif to illustrate Jack’s strength of character and to support two of the themes: A Child’s Ability to Endure Tremendous Hardship and Sources of Unlikely Support in Trying Times. Jack is left without a source of support or safety when his mother abandons him and is immediately thrust into surviving on his own. He has to steal, sneak into places to sleep at night, eat from the garbage, sleep in the woods, experience cold and hunger, and endure the challenge of having a racing, exhausted, and anxious mind. Jack survives on little food and is frequently dehydrated or trying to function without sleep. Despite all of this, Jack manages to stay strong and keep his mind on his goal. At first, this goal is finding his mother, and then it becomes finding Lydia. One of the most prominent themes, The Effects of Unstable Attachment on Children, comes into play because Jack is abandoned to survive on his own and thus loses trust in his mother. He must instead rely on people he doesn’t know to help him when he’s living without a home or someone to take care of him.